MCADCafe Industry Predictions 2024 – Authentise

By Andre Wegner , CEO, Authentise

Andre Wegner

2024: Solutions to the Supply Chain Crunch 

The world’s supply chains have been tightening for years now. Covid first taught us the risks of a Just-in-Time mentality. War, terrorism and increasing geo-political tensions have done the rest. It seems that 2023 was the year everybody finally accepted that business-as-usual was no longer an option. In 2024 we’re going to figure out what to do about it.

If Just-in-Time delivery isn’t an option, Just-in-Time production may be. The emerging opportunity is that we need to move from idea-to-part much faster. The government is focusing on increased speed in Replicator and similar programmes. Companies are also realizing this and investing in System of Engagement tools to liberate their design and engineering decisions, speeding up the product design process. The industry is learning from additive and other (relatively) new manufacturing processes how agility in manufacturing is possible, and how an increased connection between manufacturing and engineering enables this. Data will remain a focus for this task, quality control and increasing the control-loop from the machine to the whole value chain: We’re seeing the fruition of decades of labour in generative design algorithms and similar tools that can have a dramatic impact on design speed if utilized correctly. 2024 is the year in which we set the pathway to do just that. Improved intent capture from engineering will interface directly with the generative design algorithms, which in turn smoothly control devices. The systems, factories, tools and algorithms to support it have all been independently built. It now needs to be added to a smooth, end-to-end process.

Specifically that means that the investment in manufacturing investment supercycle, which really started in 2023, will continue. It may not have quite the same pace as in previous years due to constraints on capital but will continue to outstrip investments in other areas. We should see a dramatic increase in productivity and reduction in time to market. Reshoring will rise. We’ll also see the rise for a new breed of engineering and manufacturing providers that can take products from idea to shipment. Because of the aforementioned capital constraints, these organizations won’t have the same free-spending approach of previous VC backed organizations, but build on existing structures to deliver the end-to-end value chains.

The process of moving towards a more real-time idea-to-part process will take years. But increased confidence that organizations can be reactive to the environment and their customers’ needs will mean that management will gain the confidence to start reducing inventory levels from their current historic highs by the end of the year. Longer term, the changes we predict in 2024 will engender a better ability to meet the challenges of our generation such as more sustainable products and solutions to the climate crisis, and react to customers needs and rapidly changing desires.

Category: Predictions

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2024 at 2:24 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.